A Gathering of Ghosts

by Karen Maitland

  But did they, though? In those last few hours as they waited for their execution, did their flesh not shrink from the pain of it, their minds scream in terror of what death might really hold? Christ did. Had He less courage, less faith than they, or did they not understand what death was?

  Maybe I have, after all these years, finally lost my faith. I know that I am no saint. But I have made my confession as truthfully as I can, if not to Brother Roul or to a priest, then at least to the image of Christ, who hangs on the cross above the altar. Up there His wounds perpetually bleed afresh in the flickering red glow of the lamp. Blood pours from His pale body, a spring, a river, a flood, but it does not reach me. It does not cleanse me or absolve me.

  I kneel outside His light and His indifferent stare is fastened on something behind me. On the door? On the place that my executioners will enter? Will they meet His eyes and hesitate just for a moment?

  My body stiffens as I hear the click of the latch, the creak of wood, feel the blast of cold air enter then swirl about me, like the vortex into which the whores and harlots are cast in Purgatory. In the past few days, I have lived this moment a thousand times. I’ve asked myself if, when they come, I should rise from my knees and turn to face them with courage. Make them face me, make them look into my eyes as they do this. And I will let them do it. To resist would be undignified, useless.

  Shall I remain on my knees in prayer, so that the last thing I shall see is the painted figure of the one I have died for hanging in His death? Shall I keep my brothers from seeing the accusation in my eyes, spare them the pain of watching the life drain from my face? Can I do it? Can I simply make myself wait and not struggle, not plead?

  I hear three sets of footfalls, soft and stealthy on the stones behind me, the faint jingle of the three sword belts, three breaths quick, shallow. I know my death will be at Brother Roul’s hand. He would not ask another to do what he could not. Two of them stop . . . wait. Do they pray? Pray for my soul or for their brother to give him courage? The other pair of boots advances, and I can feel him standing behind me, hear the pounding of his heart . . . or is it mine? The rustle of his sleeve as he hastily crosses himself. The mutter of a hastily spoken prayer, uttered so low I cannot tell if he is praying for his strength or my forgiveness. But Christ hanging above does not bend His gaze to look at either of us. Is this what He demands? Is this why He was born and was crucified? Is it? If I could be sure . . . Do it, do it now, quickly, before my courage fails me!

  No, no, please, wait! Another hour, another minute, please. I am not ready. Save me! Blessed Virgin, save me. I am afraid to die.

  His arm brushes against my veil as he drops the cord over my neck. It tightens against my throat, and he twists swiftly, he twists hard.

  They buried my body out on the moor, under cover of darkness. If any shred of life still lingered in it, that act alone would have snuffed it out for they dropped me into a water-filled hole, smothered me in oozing mud. I would have drowned, had I still breath in my lungs. I think my corpse will rot quickly unless, of course, the peaty water preserves my remains as it has the corpses of those who were bound and cast alive with nooses about their necks to drown in the bog pools before Christ was ever carried to this isle.

  They say I will burn in Hell. That’s what they say, but the devil has not come for me yet, and neither have the angels. Only you came, only you spoke to me, summoned me and I am content to sit in your company.

  Chapter 61

  Morwen

  Sorrel and me, we built the pyre between the great rocks on Fire Tor. Took many days to dry the wood around the fire we kept burning inside the cave. But there was smashed wood enough to find in the tinners’ valley, scattered down the length of it as the waters sank back to the river, where they belonged.

  Those tinners who’d escaped the flood had taken whatever they could carry away from the turf huts and fled even before the flood had retreated. But when the water was gone, there were good pickings buried under the mud and gravel for the villagers to scavenge, or so they reckoned. Soon as word got out, they were swarming over the valley, like ravens squabbling and flapping over a dead sheep, trying to snatch up all the treasures they could find to use or sell – iron pots, picks, kegs and nets. Most were buried in the mud and they had to hunt for them, trying to spot the tip of a spade or the spar of a ladder they could drag up from beneath the stones. There were curses aplenty when they went to the trouble of digging them out only to find them smashed, but they took them anyway: a new handle could be fixed to a spade or a staved-in keg could be burned on the hearth fire. What they really wanted was food, but the river had taken every bite as her toll.

  They even stripped the corpses of the tinners and their chillern, stripping the filthy rags from them, cutting off a knife that still hung from someone’s waist or wrenching off the sodden boots. Not the amulets or crucifixes, though – no one would rob the dead of those for fear their spirits would come looking for them. The bodies were left where they lay. The birds and beasts had already started picking over them for they were starving. It wasn’t many days before there was nothing but hair and bones. When the water drained away, some corpses were left buried under mud and the waste gravel from the spoil heaps that had been washed down with them. Sometimes it was only when you trod on them that you felt a leg or face under your bare feet, his face.

  Soon as we’d finished building the pyre on Fire Tor, we carried the corpse of Ankow out and laid it on it. Ma wouldn’t dare come up here again, I knew that, not now she’d seen what we could do. We laid him facing the Blessed Isles, and I combed his flaxen hair over the hole in his skull, though there was no disguising the long gash across his throat. I took the hag-stone from his beard, which Ma had placed there, and the black river stone Ryana had laid on his forehead, and the bracelet of the flying thorn I had woven for his wrist. All those I would place on the new Ankow. This one must be set free to make his last journey.

  We heaped more wood and dried peats over him, for the fire must be hot to eat through flesh, and as darkness fell, we set it ablaze. The scarlet flames darted in and out of the wood beneath, and then as the night wind gathered strength, they rose up through the pyre, crackling and roaring into the night sky. The glow turned the twisting smoke red and orange and blue as it spiralled upwards. We sat side by side, Sorrel and me, as the spirits drew close about us, crawling through the stones and slithering over the grass, the breath of their wings brushing our skin, the smell and taste of wood smoke and burning flesh filling our mouths and nostrils.

  Below the tor we heard the soft pad of claws on stone, the panting and whining as the hounds gathered, their coats crackling blue as lightning, their red eyes glowing out of the darkness. Old Crockern’s hounds were circling the tor. They were waiting for Ankow, waiting to take him home.

  A shape was rising out of the smoke, gathering itself dense and dark as a shadow on a summer’s day. Only its eyes lived, glowing like the hounds’ eyes in the dark. It stood, head bowed.

  ‘I loved her.’ His voice was like the wind moaning through the rocks in the cave. ‘I knew it was sin, for I had already a wife, but my bride wasn’t of my choosing. It was her I loved and when her father sent her away, I had to follow. I was burning up for her. She was my life, my breath, my being. But when I found her, she was changed. She would not touch me. I had come so far, risked everything, and she would not even look at me. I only meant to take a kiss. I thought if she felt my lips upon hers, her body would remember our passion and I’d see the tenderness flow back into her eyes. But once I kissed her, I could not stop myself.

  ‘I do not blame her for what she did, for the blow or the knife or for my death. I deserved to die. But I have been punished for my love beyond all imagining. I have been the slave of Death, and I have walked the lych-ways over this moor without rest or mercy, guiding the souls in misery and torment to their rest, but never reaching the place of peace. I can bear no more. Release me, I beg you, have mercy, release me and l
et me rest.’

  ‘Go,’ I told him. ‘Another has come to take your place. You are Death’s bondsman no more.’

  There was a sound like a great flock of birds taking wing and at once the figure’s head lifted. He looked straight at us, then his words came like the voice of an ancient door closing. ‘Thank you.’

  The figure of smoke grew fainter and greyer, the edges dissolving into the sky, and all at once the hounds began to howl, a great mournful cry that rolled across the moor. One by one the pairs of burning eyes vanished. The pyre suddenly collapsed in on itself, sending a shower of golden sparks high into the sky as if stars were rising back to their places.

  I took Sorrel’s hand and we slipped into the cave. A corpse already lay on the wicker frame above a fire that emitted only smoke. It had been well prepared with herbs and honey. It would take several weeks of smoking before I could be sure it would not decay. But Brigid had guided us to it quickly, before it had started to rot. He was her choice and we would tend his corpse carefully, Sorrel and I.

  His ghost, whimpering, pleading, terrified, was already cowering among the shadows of the cave, as the leather wings and claws of the spirits slithered over him, curious to see what we had brought them to play with.

  ‘Let me go,’ he begged. ‘I was always nice to you, Sorrel, isn’t that right? You’re a good woman. I always said so. You’d not see a poor soul tormented. There’s dozens died in that valley. You could take any of them. They deserve to suffer, thieves the lot of them, murderers too. Take them, let me go . . . What do you want with me?’ he wailed.

  ‘You are Ankow, the serf and bondsman of Death,’ I said. ‘And you’ll do our bidding, till you come to carry us safe to the lych-ways and that will be many years from now.’

  Gleedy gave a great howl of despair, but he was in our storeroom now. And there would be no release for him, not while we lived.

  Epilogue

  Dertemora

  The firelight licks about the slabs of stone inside the tor. Its scarlet fingers probe the crevices, and all the secret places that only the phantasms know. Morwen sits facing Sorrel across the fire. The light is gentle on Morwen’s ancient wrinkled skin and burnishes her grey hair to the tawny red it once was, the colour of an autumn leaf. And the face that smiles at Morwen through the smoke and flames seems as young as the one she first saw at the door of Ma’s cottage, though many seasons have passed for them both since then.

  The white cloth on the slab at the far end of the cave is black with the dust and dirt of decades. It billows and slides from the mounds, crumpling on to the floor as if a wind has stirred it, but though the wind is baying around the rocks outside it dare not enter here. Three figures lie side by side on the shelf, a holy family, a dead family – Gleedy, old Kendra and Ryana.

  Kendra perished from old age and hunger the winter after the flood, cursing Ankow when he came for her and spitting venom to the end, poisonous as any long-cripple whose head sways in the stone wall. Ryana died from making herself pottage of hemlock having mistaken it for cow parsley. Morwen always said she couldn’t tell mouse-ear from mugwort. She’d warned her not to eat it, but her sister would not take telling from Mazy-wen. But Morwen doesn’t call upon their spirits to aid her. She has no need. She and Sorrel have all the power they want between them and it grows. Besides, she’d had enough of their malice in life, and death will not have made them kinder.

  Taegan does not lie here. She ran off to live with Daveth and his brother. She has a brood of boisterous, red-headed offspring, grandchildren too, though the Black Death took some and famine took more, but Taegan and the brothers survived. And as to which brother fathered which of Taegan’s sons and daughters, they neither know nor care. For they are brothers, and they have always shared the good things that come their way.

  The cross on Father Guthlac’s grave has been swallowed by the earth, as have his bones. He and the old gods had long been enemies, and he recognised his foe in that child. Old Crockern felled him, like a tree in a storm. The wind has no malice, but it will destroy anything that lies in its path, when it begins to blow.

  Only the ruins of the priory stand now, and they are being eaten away by storm and rain, snow and frost, and by the villagers who, year after year, carry away more of the stone to mend their cottages and build their pinfolds. The ravens and buzzards nest safe on the broken walls, and foxes burrow beneath them. The villagers have reclaimed their well, and bring their children for Morwen and Sorrel to dip in its waters, for they are the true keepers of it now.

  In the tinners’ valley, the sores on the land are healing. Grass and heather, sedges and gorse have crept over the wounded backs of the hills. The river lies quietly in her old bed, but scars will remain long after those who made them are forgotten, and deep welts will for ever mark Old Crockern’s hide.

  Forgotten, did I say? Yes, their names are forgotten, but they are not unseen. For if you are foolish enough to find yourself upon the lych-ways when night falls, stumbling between the sucking mires and black bog pools, straining to peer into the darkness; if you turn in fear at the whispering in the reeds and the voices in the rocks, you will glimpse flickering lights moving slowly ahead of you. And if you hold your breath and watch, you will see the silent host of men, women and children who follow those bone-white lights. Some are dressed in the white robes of monks, others in the black robes of sisters, some in beggars’ rags, others in tinners’ mud. You will see old village priests and women skull-gaunt with hunger, men pale with gory wounds, crones as wrinkled as time itself, or babes so young they have not lived a single day. But if you see them, do not speak to them. Do not follow them. They are the shadows of the dead. And once you cross into the deadlands, there’s no coming back, Brothers, there is no coming back.

  Historical Notes

  From 1315 to 1317, the Great Famine ravaged Europe. It was caused by extreme wet, cold weather, which affected the whole of northern Europe from Russia down to southern Italy. Crops failed and livestock died, causing widespread starvation. Even King Edward II, passing through St Albans with his court, went hungry because there was no bread. Bands of people were on the move across Europe, hoping to find food or better conditions elsewhere. Children, babies and the infirm were abandoned on the steps of churches and monasteries, the elderly deliberately wandering off to die so that the young ones could live. There was a surge in violent crime and highway robbery as people became increasingly desperate. Frightening reports circulated, claiming that some were turning to cannibalism, but no one knew if they were true or merely rumours.

  The Knights Templar

  The Knights Templar were originally founded in the twelfth century to protect travellers making pilgrimages to Jerusalem. But over the following two hundred years they became the international financiers of Europe, lending money and amassing huge resources of wealth and land. They were answerable only to the Pope, and this, combined with their wealth and power, posed a grave threat to the kings of Europe. Philip IV of France particularly feared their increasing influence, so much so that in 1307 he turned on the Templars in France. He arrested the knights and their commanders on the grounds of immorality, sorcery and heresy, charges the Pope was reluctantly forced to investigate. Over the next few years, many knights across Europe were tortured to induce them to confess to these and other crimes, including homosexuality, immorality with women and alleged bizarre secret rituals, including worshipping a ‘head’. Those Templars who refused to confess or who subsequently recanted confessions made under torture were burned alive.

  In England, King Edward II at first flatly refused to believe the accusations levelled against the Templars, or perhaps, given the accusations of homosexuality that had been made against him, was anxious to defend the knights. He resisted Philip’s demands to bring the Templars to trial, and it wasn’t until a papal bull arrived in December 1308, commanding him to take action, that he gave orders that the knights were to be arrested. Even so, it was only when members of the Inquis
ition landed on English soil in September 1309 to begin the ecclesiastical trials in London, York and Lincoln, that the real round-up of Templars began. This was two years after the first arrests in France, and by then a number of leading Templars had fled from Europe to England.

  The Pope authorised the use of torture against the Templars arrested in England, because they were accused of heresy, though torture was technically unlawful under English law. But no one could be found who could do it effectively. They either accidentally killed the victim before he’d talked or were not practised in the art of breaking him down mentally as well as physically, so few confessions were extracted in that way. Most evidence presented at the trials in England was obtained from a Templar who had previously been arrested and escaped, and was believed to have been a spy carrying information to the Grand Master in France.

  The Templar order was disbanded throughout Europe by the Pope, and its wealth, when it could be found, was declared forfeit to the Pope or Crown. Templar property was mainly handed over to the Templars’ rivals, the Knights of St John.

  Throughout their history, the Templars and Hospitallers were rivals for power and territory. They frequently clashed in the Holy Land, the Templars supporting the baronial side of any political disputes, while the Hospitallers supported the monarchy. However, some of the noble families of Europe placed sons and daughters in both orders as a way of gaining the maximum political influence and financial advantage. It also ensured they always had one of their offspring on the winning side. Having children in both orders was a way of hedging temporal and spiritual bets.